1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Palaestra

PALAESTRA (Gr. παλαίστρα), the name apparently applied by the Greeks to two kinds of places used for gymnastic and athletic exercises. In the one case it seems confined to the places where boys and youths received a general gymnastic training, in the other to a part of a gymnasium where the athletae, the competitors in the public games, were trained in wrestling (παλαίειν), to wrestle) and boxing. The boys’ palaestrae were private institutions and generally bore the name of the manager or of the founder; thus at Athens there was a palaestra of Taureas (Plato, Charmides). The Romans used the terms gymnasium and palaestra indiscriminately for any place where gymnastic exercises were carried on.